The Informers - Bret Easton Ellis [48]
The rest of the English Prices nod, mumbling in unison.
I try to look the singer in the eyes. I try to say “Great.” No one says anything.
“Hey,” the lead singer says to Roger. “He’s pretty, uh, subdued.”
“Yes,” Roger says. “We call him, in fact, Sub Dude.”
“That’s … cool,” the lead singer says apprehensively.
“Who were you listening to, man?” one of them asks me.
“When?” I ask, confused.
“In, like, when you were a little kid, in, like, high school and stuff. Influences, man.”
“Oh … lots of things. Um, I don’t really remember.…” I look at Roger for help. “I’d prefer not to say.”
“Do you want me to, like, repeat the question, man?” the lead singer asks.
I just stare at him, frozen, unable to move.
“That’s life,” the lead singer finally says, sighing.
“Captain Beefheart, the Ronettes, antiestablishment rage, you know,” Roger says blithely, then, “Who are your friends?” He laughs slyly and the lead singer laughs, barking, and that’s the cue for the rest of the band of follow.
“These girls are great.”
“Yes sir,” one of them says in a deep monotone with a lisp. “Can’t understand one bit of American but they fuck like rabbits.”
“Can’t you?” the lead singer asks the girl sitting next to him. “You a good fuck, bitch?” he asks, a sincere expression, on his face, nodding. The girl looks at the expression, takes in the nod, the smile, and she smiles back a worried, innocent smile and nods and everyone laughs.
The lead singer, nodding and smiling, asks another girl, “You give real good head, right? You like it when I slap your face with my fat leathery cock, you gook bitch?”
The girl nods, smiling, looks at the other girls, and the band laughs, Roger laughs, the Oriental girls laugh. I laugh, finally taking off my sunglasses, loosening up a little. Silence takes over and everyone at the table is left, momentarily, to his own uneasy devices. Roger tells the band to order some drinks. The Oriental girls giggle, adjust tiny pink boots, the lead singer keeps glancing at my bandaged hand and I see myself in the same naive curled grin, in the blur of a photo session, in a hotel room in San Francisco, in a zillion dollars, in another ten months.
In a dressing room at the arena before we are supposed to go on, I just sit in a chair in front of a huge oval mirror staring at my reflection through Wayfarers, at myself nibbling radishes. I start to kick my foot against the wall, my fists clenched, Roger walks in, sits down, lights a cigarette. After a while I say something.
“What?” Roger asks. “You’re mumbling.”
“I don’t want to go out there.”
“Because why?” Roger asks as if speaking to a child.
“I don’t feel too good.” I stare at my reflection, uselessly.
“Don’t say that. You have a distinctly upbeat air about you.”
“Yeah, and you’re gonna win Mr. Congeniality any fucking year now,” I growl, the, calmed down, “Get Reggie.”
“Get ready for what?” he asks and then, seeing that I am about to pounce on him, relents, “Just a joke.”
Roger makes a phone call, ten minutes later someone is wrapping something around my arm, a vein is slapped, pinpricks, vitamins, saying yeah, weird warmness rushing through me, flushing out the coldness, fast at first, then, more slowly, yeah, sure.
Roger sits back down on the couch and says, “Don’t beat up any more groupies, all right? Can you hear me? Lay off.”
“Oh man,” I say. “They … like … it. They like to pet me. I let them pet … me.”
“Just cool it. Do you hear me?”
“Oh man fuck you man I’ll do it again.”
“What did you say to me?”
“Man, I’m Bryan—”
“I know who you are,” Roger cuts me off. “You’re the same awful asshole who beat up three girls on the last tour, threatened one with a carving knife. These are girls we are still paying off. Do you remember that bitch from Missouri?”
“Missouri?” I giggle.
“The one you almost killed?” Roger says. “Does that refresh your memory?”
“No.”
“We are still paying her and some scumbag lawyer off—”
“You’re getting heavy, man, and when you’re getting heavy … you must, um, leave me alone.”
“Do